Mark your calendars: Java 9 lands next year

The Java 9 schedule, released by an Oracle official, allows for time to test key upgrades such as modularity

Java 9 would arrive on Sept. 22, 2016, under a proposed schedule posted online by a prominent Oracle Java official this week.

In a mailing list message cited on Twitter, a schedule for Java Development Kit 9, which would be based on the Java Standard Edition 9 specification, has the release being feature-complete on Dec. 10 with several additional steps taken before general availability in September 2016. The message was posted by Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java platform group at Oracle.

"The dates here are meant to leave sufficient time for broad review and testing of the significant features of the release, in particular the introduction of a module system and the modularization of the platform, while maintaining the cadence of shipping a major release about every two years," Reinhold said in the post." Modularity via Project Jigsaw is a key feature of Java 9. The last major release of Java, version 8, became available in March 2014 and featured functional programming capabilities.

Other milestones in the schedule include having all tests run by Feb. 4 of next year, a zero bug bounce by April 21, 2016, and Rampdown phase 2 by June 16, 2016. Reinhold said comments from JDK 9 committers are welcome. If no objections are raised or all objections are addressed by next Tuesday, then the proposed schedule will be adopted as official.